Taliban attacks dismissed as propaganda

AUSTRALIAN Defence analysts have dismissed a surge in Taliban violence as propaganda, and Foreign Minister Bob Carr says it's distressing and discouraging but won't speed up plans for the withdrawal of Australian forces.

However, former military commander in the Middle East, retired Major General John Cantwell has questioned whether the Afghanistan mission has been worth the price of lost lives.

In coordinated attacks, Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers struck at government buildings, embassies and coalition bases in Kabul and three other cites, declaring it the start of their summer offensive.

Retired general Jim Molan, coalition chief of operations in Iraq in 2004-05, tipped the attacks were unlikely to continue beyond 24 hours.

In fact, Afghan security forces, with some assistance from coalition forces, regained control in Kabul within 18 hours.

"If you look at it for what it is, it's not much," General Molan told Sky News.

"Maybe 20-30 people in Kabul have done what they did late last year and attacked some propaganda targets."

General Molan said this was the kind of tactic where the key factor was to impact on the US state of mind.

"From a military point of view, the more of these silly attacks that they do in the capital city, the more of the Taliban we can kill," he said.

"I don't think the situation is good in Afghanistan, but I don't think what happened in Kabul yesterday and today is the real indication of this."

Defence analyst Raspal Khosa said insurgents launched similar attacks in the same diplomatic area of Kabul last September.

"It's been a Taliban tactic to actually focus on municipal centres because they have been challenged quite effectively in the countryside," he said.

"The focus of the Taliban is creating these spectacular attacks and trying to target political figures."

US intelligence firm Stratfor said these latest attacks grabbed headlines but failed to demonstrate any change to the tactical or operational situation in Afghanistan.

"The Taliban's challenge continues to be in part to ratchet up domestic opposition to the war in the West, which it has so far failed to do, or to make the Western presence in Afghanistan appear more tenuous," it said in an analysis.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith says the Taliban is increasingly focusing on "propaganda attacks" because it has lost ground in the field.

He insists that overall "there is growing improvement on security".

"The entire response was handled by Afghan National Security Forces themselves ... and handled, on the advice I have, pretty well," he told ABC TV today.

"(But) we will continue to see the Taliban and other associated groups resorting to greater reliance upon the roadside bombs ... but even more so greater reliance upon the high profile propaganda-motivated attacks including suicide bombings."

Mr Smith said the Taliban's lack of progress in the field was partly why "for the first time" there had been clear indications it was contemplating holding talks to find a political solution.

Australia has some 1550 troops in Afghanistan, mostly in Oruzgan Province training members of the Afghan army and conducting security operations.

In a decade of military operations, 32 Australian soldiers have died in Afghanistan.

General Cantwell, who retired earlier this year, said he could never look at any soldier, sailor or airman and say "your life's forfeit for some political purpose".

"But at the highest level of strategy, and in the dirty ugly world of international relationships, where it's you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, that those lives become less important, and taking that longer term view, that hard-nosed, realpolitik view that politicians do, and must, it's worth it," he said.